As hurricanes caused panic, death, misery and damage along the Gulf Coast of the USA last month, there was an eerie sense that times really were changing.

Deadly hurricanes are nothing new. In 1900 Hurricane Galveston killed between 6000 and 8000 people on the same coast.

But two weeks after Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans – and showed how thin the veneer of civilisation in the West really is – scientists announced that the number of hurricanes like it and Rita has nearly doubled worldwide over the past 35 years thanks to rising sea-surface temperatures (News & Views, overleaf).

Although the scientists maintained that the rising temperatures couldn’t yet be definitively linked to global warming, many prefer not to wait and see before doing something radical about the amount of carbon emissions they pump into the atmosphere.

Take China. Although, as a country, it’s the world’s second biggest polluter, developers there have undertaken to build an entire eco-city, equivalent in area to Manhattan, called Dongtan (see page 14). Built with local materials, fed by local produce, powered by carbon-neutral techniques and designed to make cars redundant, Dongtan will be an unprecedented step toward sustainability on a grand scale, international experts agree. That is, if it gets built. A planning decision is due next year and if it gets the nod, phase one is due for completion in 2010. We should hope it goes ahead because it will provide a much-needed test run for the rest of us.

Ace of clubs

The times seem to be changing closer to home as well, in the area of construction reform. Constructing Excellence has a new chief executive, Mace chairman Bob White (Interview, page 12) and a new, expanded membership thanks to the merger with the Construction Clients Group (News & Views). It also has a hard-nosed, membership-only business plan to sustain it (it hopes) when DTI funding is cut off.

Since 1998 the Egan-sparked reform agenda has been accused variously as a gravy train for professional reformers and a self-important talking shop that has had little real effect on the industry.

Now though, it seems as poised to make the shift from being a puritanical cheerleader at the industry’s fringe to the kind of club you can’t afford to be excluded from. We wish it luck.

Source

Construction Manager